AG-DVX200 4K Large-Sensor Handheld Camcorder

harddrive said:
Interestingly, those results must be better (at least as far as resolution is concerned) than you'd get with most of the 4K cameras that are currently considered high end - F5, F55, Varicam etc, as they all have 4K Bayer sensors that deBayer down to less than true 4K. That is not for one moment to say that it will therefore be a better camera as such - there's a lot more to "quality" than pure resolution - but..... it makes you think!
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The reason it looks so good is because internally, as far as I can calculate, the DVX200 is a 5K camera. According to the published specifications on Panasonic's site, they claim that it uses 13.35 megapixels for 4K. I back-figured that based on the aspect ratio and came up with 5022 x 2659. Now, that's probably not the exact count, because I'm sure that the "13.35 megapixels" is rounded off, so it may be 5024 x 2660 or something like that. But it seems to me that it's using a pretty much ideal oversample ratio to deliver a fully resolved 4K; with modern debayer algorithms companies usually say that a de-bayered image retains about 75-80% of its nominal frame size as resolved detail, and at 5,024 pixels of source data, that should de-bayer down to around 3800-4020 resolved pixels of detail. Which is what the chart shows.

UHD/60P uses little oversampling, they claim 8.7 megapixels for an 8.3 megapixel frame, so you can expect that UHD/60P will resolve more around a Red One's level of resolved detail. Which still ain't nothin' to shake a stick at.
 
Barry and/or Noel... since you both have working cameras, can you answer me this? What is the low light capabilities compared to, say, the AF100? GH4? PX270? AC130/160? HMC150? I saw someone mention in one review it has a "high sensitivity mode"... is it the same sort of thing as the PX270, and how does it compare?

Since I shoot a lot of robotic and other types of surgery requiring that room lights be off, and since this cam looks like it's very much aimed at the event and ENG type production crowd, that sort of info would be most helpful.
 
i dont shoot surgeries (yet) but would also be interested in low light viability since i could foresee myself in many of those situations
 
Mike Harvey said:
Barry and/or Noel... since you both have working cameras, can you answer me this? What is the low light capabilities compared to, say, the AF100? GH4? PX270? AC130/160? HMC150? I saw someone mention in one review it has a "high sensitivity mode"... is it the same sort of thing as the PX270, and how does it compare?
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That's the kind of question that can't be answered accurately based on these pre-production samples. Something like base resolution is easy enough to test, because the sensor itself and the OLPF are fixed hardware pieces and that's not going to change (although presumably the debayer algorithm could...)

... but sensitivity, noise signature, de-noising algorithms, all that stuff will be sorted out over the next few months. It's working now, but almost certainly not in its final form, and things could change a little or a lot, so -- there's not much point in making a decision based on today's performance.

That said...

I can tell you that the minimum ISO is 500, and that it goes up to 36dB of gain (which makes for a maximum of 32,000 ISO) but I can't say how usable it would be at 32,000 ISO; that's a LOT of gain. It looks pretty decent to me at 2000 ISO, noise-wise, but I really am not bothering to focus on that because that's specifically one of the areas that they normally set out to modify and improve during the last couple of months.

On top of all that, it does have the High Sensitivity mode, which sounds to me like it is comparable to the P.A.P. in the HPX370 etc, but I haven't tested for artifacts or anything like that yet. So far, it just seems to double the sensitivity (so an effective 64,000 ISO at maximum). It also has slow shutter speeds which would let in more light.

Subjectively, and not critically, I'd say it looks fairly decent at 2000 ISO + High Sensitivity, which is an equivalent of 4,000 ISO. Not grainless, obviously, but it looks like it'd be usable, to me, for many things. Only you can determine if you agree, of course.

If you need to shoot in zero light, it has an Infrared mode so it can shoot in pitch black. The footage would be black & white, but -- it can shoot in pitch black with an IR light, if that helps. Obviously not for many things, but might be useful for some.

Finally, if you shoot in 1080p mode, you'll gain another stop at least in terms of sensitivity because the noise gets averaged out, resulting in about a 6dB reduction in noise. So if you thought it looked okay at 2000 ISO in 4K, it would look about the same (noise-wise) at 4000 ISO when shooting 1080p mode.

But, again, this is not much more than speculation at this point, because things can and will change between now and the actual release time.
 
Thanks. I'm never shooting in pitch black, but with my AF100 and one of the X lenses at f/2.8, I'm constantly trying to balance noise from the gain with being able to see something, which usually results in me and the producer asking the surgeon to leave the room lights on for a little while if possible. While this produces usable footage, the trade off is footage that isn't as visually interesting (the glow from some of the lights on the machines with the room lights out is pretty cool looking), and potentially an irritated surgeon. Doubling the sensitivity of my AF100 would make my life a lot easier.

My alternative reason for asking is that I think people seem to get hung up on the big sensor and view this through the lens of AF100/GH4/C100/FS7 type work, and forget all the 1/3" cams out there. The AC130/160 is nearly four years old, the HMC150 is nearly eight. So are a lot of Canon's and Sony's comparable models. Folks are going to want to replace those cameras eventually... and there is a LOT of them. The DVX200 fits in that price range. Being able to get shallower depth of field while getting a huge boost in low light performance without having to mess with interchangeable lenses is going to be a big selling point in that market. Extra points for being 4k (and the ability to zoom in and crop in a 1080 timeline).
 
That's an interesting point. I should try comparing 1080 noise levels at various ISOs to see what it works out to in comparison to, say, an HPX250 at 0dB, with roughly equivalent noise... not that it'll hold true necessarily to the final version, but I imagine it should at least be in the ballpark of what the final version would be. Do keep in mind though that the little cameras usually have faster lenses, which does help balance that out some; at full wide angle the HMC150 was, I think, f/1.6? So the difference might not be as much as you might think, but I'll try to fiddle with it tomorrow and see if I can get some idea.
 
"doctor, you sewed his testicle to his ear!"

"aaaaaggggh, damnit! I was distracted by the lights we had to leave on for the camera guy."
 
Barry_Green said:
That's an interesting point. I should try comparing 1080 noise levels at various ISOs to see what it works out to in comparison to, say, an HPX250 at 0dB, with roughly equivalent noise... not that it'll hold true necessarily to the final version, but I imagine it should at least be in the ballpark of what the final version would be. Do keep in mind though that the little cameras usually have faster lenses, which does help balance that out some; at full wide angle the HMC150 was, I think, f/1.6? So the difference might not be as much as you might think, but I'll try to fiddle with it tomorrow and see if I can get some idea.
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I seem to remember that when I had the original 14-140 f4-f5.6, wide open on my AF100 was about the same as my HMC150 wide open. I'd be really interested in seeing the comparison with an HPX250 in 1080p... even if it's not going to be the final version, just to get a ballpark guesstimate.
 
Question, I shoot motor-sports video and shot to shot performance as well as auto focus response is important to me. What should I expect with a larger sensor camera compared to the HMC150 or the AC90 that I currently use? My plan is to shoot 4K 60fps and render 1080p 60fps. Also would you expect stabilization equal to the AC90 shooting 4K? I will be panning and sometimes walking while shooting.
 
Barry_Green said:
The reason it looks so good is because internally, as far as I can calculate, the DVX200 is a 5K camera. According to the published specifications on Panasonic's site, they claim that it uses 13.35 megapixels for 4K. I back-figured that based on the aspect ratio and came up with 5022 x 2659. Now, that's probably not the exact count, because I'm sure that the "13.35 megapixels" is rounded off, so it may be 5024 x 2660 or something like that. But it seems to me that it's using a pretty much ideal oversample ratio to deliver a fully resolved 4K; with modern debayer algorithms companies usually say that a de-bayered image retains about 75-80% of its nominal frame size as resolved detail, and at 5,024 pixels of source data, that should de-bayer down to around 3800-4020 resolved pixels of detail. Which is what the chart shows...
Click to expand...
So, it'd have a smaller crop factor than GH4 then, wouldn't it?
 
It seems to have the same sensor size as the GH4, when the GH4 is cropped to a 16:9 aspect ratio.

The GH4's full sensor size is the standard 4/3 sensor size: 17.3 x 13. But that's an aspect ratio of 4:3. To get to 16:9, you must shave the height down to 9.7mm. A sensor that's 17.3 x 9.7 has a diagonal of 19.83mm. The diagonal of 135 is 43.27. So the crop factor of the GH4 in 16:9 mode is 2.18.

The aforementioned DVX200 specification says that the lens really is 12.8-167mm, but that its 35mm equivalent is 28-365.3mm. Crop factor: 2.18.
 
DLD said:
So, then the DVX200 is the 20 MPX sensor from GX8?
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Same assumption here. These numbers taken from a previous post hint to a 4:3 20 MPX sensor: ( (Effective Pixels: 15,49 megapixel (FHD), 8,71 megapixel (UHD/59.94p), 12,89 megapixel (UHD/29.97p), 13,35 megapixel (4K/24p).)
 
Please note the the French test was made on a camera that was so unfinished that it did not have V Log. At least the other recent samples were with cameras that had V Log.
 
That's a pity as I find touch spot focus really useful. Focusing is very critical for 4K/QFHD and wish my FDR-AX1 had touch focus like the AX100 and my other Sony's.
 
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